


Rest for a Weary Crow

by speckled_dragon



Category: RWBY
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Hanging Out, M/M, Pre-Slash, Video & Computer Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:14:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21788842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speckled_dragon/pseuds/speckled_dragon
Summary: It's Qrow's day off - and honestly, what better time is there to brush up on his fighting game skills.
Relationships: Qrow Branwen & Harriet Bree, Qrow Branwen/Clover Ebi
Comments: 7
Kudos: 164





	Rest for a Weary Crow

Qrow walked through the halls, trying to figure out what to do with his given time off. He’d been startled awake by a missive from Ironwood telling him he was free to spend the day however he wished and he hoped the gesture he’d given his room at being woken only to be informed that he could relax would be caught by the cameras the building was likely covered in.

But now he was awake, and he could do whatever he wanted for the rest of the day. He grumbled a little and navigated his way to the kitchen to scavenge for food, his stomach taking over while the rest of him mused over his options. He could go out clubbing, he considered, before dismissing the thought near immediately. For all he knew Sal’s club wasn’t open anymore and he didn’t really feel like hunting down a new scene just for one night of dancing. And it might be a bit too tempting to drink while in such a familiar environment.

He made it to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee before reaching to his belt. His hand shook for a second before he clenched it and reached out to the countertop to grab sugar instead. As he stirred the sugar in, he opened his scroll and poked about, looking at the new features. His stomach growled and he looked up long enough to rifle through the fridge and pull out some jam for bread he hastily toasted. He returned to his scroll and hummed into his coffee.

Finally his eyes landed on a setting that simply said “Compatibility”. He blinked in surprise and pressed on the setting. Screen sharing, communication, controllers – controllers? 

He pressed on that option and felt a smile creep onto his face as the scroll confirmed that yes, it did still function as a controller for more state of the art game systems.

Systems he’s fairly certain he heard the kids mention were in one of the more student-favored rec rooms. He polished off the rest of his food and left the dishes in the sink as he ventured out of the room and towards where the rec rooms were located.

He was settled with half an hour into the empty rec room, his scroll out and him playing through the characters in the fighting game Ruby and Yang favored. It wouldn’t do for them to think they had a chance at beating him because they haven’t played in a while, he figured. Plus this was a perfectly great way to spend his day off as far as he was concerned. If James didn’t like it, he could be more specific next time.

He was familiarizing himself with Soaring Ninja’s moveset again when the door opened behind him. “Room’s occupied,” he called out, not bothering to look away as the AI enemy he was facing off against kept jumping about around his character.

“Sorry – wait, what? Qrow?” The voice sounded confused and he spared a moment to glance over his shoulder. It was Harriet. She was staring at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Enjoying my day off,” he said, finally pausing the game so he could twist around to see her better. “Why, what are you doing here?”

“Trying to figure out why the room was in use despite not being reserved by anyone,” she said, now on the defensive, and he continued to stare at her to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Having to reserve a rec room – yeah, that sounded like Atlas alright. She held up her own scroll and walked in. “There, I’ve set you up,” she said, before leaning against an arm of the couch.

He nodded to her before returning to his game. “Appreciate it.” They didn’t talk for the rest of his fight, the only sounds coming from Qrow as he hissed at any near miss. Once he was done he let the scroll drop from his hand and snatched at the water bottle he’d brought with him, only to see Harriet still watching. “What is it?”

She snorted and shifted her weight back onto her feet. “I don’t know, it’s just kind of interesting. You’re one of the most well-known hunters still alive, and here you are on your day off playing some little kid’s game.”

“Well yeah. If I acted like one of the most well-known hunters still alive, I wouldn’t be for much longer,” Qrow said, his brow furrowing at the phrasing. “That kind of a mindset, that self-importance, gets people killed. I’m just a Hunter with an awful Semblance who wants the people around him to be safe.” That’s all he’s ever been, all he’s ever wanted. That extra stuff came later. “Besides,” he added, trying to lighten the mood as Harriet absorbed his words, “you’re never too old to teach your nieces that no matter how much they grow up, or how good they get at being Huntresses, they’ll never beat you at their favorite video game.”

She laughed a little at that, her serious mien washed away by her amusement, and got her own scroll out. “Well, in that case, I think you’ve found yourself a real person to play against for the night.”

He knew he probably looked surprised and glanced away, picking his scroll back up while she configured the game to two-player. “I didn’t realize you were so eager to lose,” he said, and the competitive light in her eyes made him focus on the screen, his own nerves lighting up.

“Oh, you’re on, old man,” she heckled, and they both went silent as the game’s announcer called out.

“Ready? Fight!”

* * *

Clover was playing cards with Vine and Elm when his scroll went off, the little alarm grabbing his attention instantly. He felt his good mood slip away as he pulled it out; that had been a high-priority alarm, which meant either an urgent message from Ironwood or that his assigned mission partner’s Aura had gone down outside of a sanctioned mission.

“Is something the matter?” Vine asked him, ever the eye of the storm that the Ace Ops could be, and Clover forced himself to breathe as he pulled up their team profile.

“Qrow’s Aura went down all of a sudden,” he told them, and while Vine hummed serenely and waited for him to elaborate Elm leaned over the table to get a look at his scroll as well. His eyes went to Qrow’s profile and didn’t bother hiding his confusion from his team. “You can barely tell.” It looked more like a glitch on the screen than an actual decrease to his Aura, and the concern that had crawled up his throat went back down to hover in his chest.

“Maybe he went out hunting on his night off,” Elm suggested, withdrawing to rest her chin on an open palm. “You said his nieces take trips down to hunt in their spare time, right?”

“He’s yet to do so himself,” Vine pointed out. “We would have heard about it.” From Clover, he didn’t need to add.

Clover ignored the implication and stood up, waving his scroll at them. “I’m going to look for him. If something’s come up I want to be able to help out.”

They nodded and stood up as well. “Sounds good,” Elm said, not bothering to hide how she and Vine followed closely behind him. When he offered her a questioning look she grinned back. “What, you think you can keep all of the excitement to yourself? I think not!”

Clover nodded back, his own worry receding at her confidence. Behind them Vine spoke up, and they turned to see him on his own scroll. “The logs have one Qrow Branwen listed as having booked the use of a rec room half an hour ago.”

The feeling in Clover’s chest twisted, relief and concern pressing down on him. “Then why did his Aura go down?” He shook his head to clear away the myriad thoughts that bombarded him and offered them a smile. “Let’s go see what that’s about then, shall we?”

They both agreed, curiosity getting to the both of them if Clover had to guess and they quickly made their way to where the rec rooms were laid out. The trip was silent until they got to the last hall, and a very familiar, very angry voice was heard. “Are you serious? What the hell?!”

“Maybe we should take a break.” That was Qrow, and Clover felt the tightening in his chest go away completely as he heard how relaxed he was. There was a beat of silence. “You know, since you’ve been losing so badly.”

A growl answered him and Clover felt his heart flip as Qrow laughed at Harriet. Was this what he sounded like when he was at his most relaxed? When he wasn’t hating himself for things he couldn’t control? He sounded like the home Clover desperately wanted. “I think we found him,” he said, trying to hide just how affected he’d been.

Fortunately Elm seem distracted in getting into the room they’d claimed and Vine was too polite to call him on anything he may have noticed, and Clover felt his cheeks hurt from his smile as he followed Elm to see Qrow and Harriet sitting on the couch playing some fighter game against each other.

“Come on, Speedy, I thought you were supposed to have fast reflexes,” Qrow heckled, and Clover watched him take out Harriet’s character with ease, impressed despite himself.

Harriet punched Qrow in the arm. “It’s not my fault the scroll can’t match my response time,” she argued, and Qrow snickered at her.

“Sure it isn’t,” he mock-soothed, clearly not meaning a word. “You’ll just have to make up for what the scroll can’t do.”

Harriet was staring at him in suspicion. “What do you mean?”

Qrow shrugged and rolled his neck, and Clover took a moment to follow the curve of it before returning his gaze to Qrow’s face. He was still smiling, a tiny thing that nevertheless made Clover want to do everything in his power to keep it there. “I’m just saying – if it can’t keep up, and you won’t slow down, you’re never going to win.”

Harriet growled at him again but Elm’s laughter broke them out of their banter, both of them blinking in surprise at the new people in the room. “A good analysis of our speedster and you’ve barely seen her on the field! I can see why you’re a lauded Huntsman.” She took advantage of his sputtered denial to snatch the scroll out of his hands and nudge him aside. “Let’s see if I’m a bit more your speed,” she said to Harriet, who was quick to pick up the thrown gauntlet, and soon they were embroiled in their own fight.

Vine watched them both and cross his arms over his chest, fully relaxing now that the situation was resolved. “I’m glad to see our worry was for nothing,” he admitted, before going to the recliner nearest to the sofa and settling in to watch the game.

Qrow looked over at Clover, and quirked up an eyebrow. “What was the worry about?” He asked, and Clover took the opportunity to join him on the couch, sitting on his free side. He laid his arm along the back of the couch behind Qrow.

“My scroll alerted me that your Aura had gone down outside of a mission,” he told him, and Qrow appeared confused for a moment before his eyes lit up and he looked away.

“Right; I know what happened. Sorry if I worried you,” he said, but Clover waved the apology off.

“I’m just glad you’re fine,” he assured the other man, and watched him glance back with a pleased smile. “So what had happened?” he asked, curious about what could have caused the Huntsman’s Aura to go down. It wasn’t as if Harriet was actually putting any force into her punches from the looks of things.

Qrow was silent, either collecting his thoughts or debating what to tell him, and Clover took the moment to watch Elm and Harriet. They were pretty evenly matched, he noted; Harriet favored a style that chipped away at Elm’s health rather than full combos, and Elm preferred to block and try and counter Harriet’s attacks.

“I think,” Qrow started, and Clover snapped his gaze back to the other man, to see him biting his lip a little in between his words. “It might be easiest to show you.” And suddenly his scroll beeped at him, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, and Qrow’s eyes seemed to burn brighter than he’d seen them ever before.

Immediately there was a cry out to their side. “Oh come _on_! Not this again,” Harriet bemoaned, and Elm wooped as her character suplexed Harriet. All of a sudden the game between the two of them heated up, more mistakes cropping up between them, and Clover watched on in astonishment until he saw the screen the game was showing on flicker, as if it were glitching. And he turned back to Qrow.

The older Huntsman was smirking now, his shoulders shaking with repressed mirth as he trained his eyes on the two players. Clover stared at him, the dots connecting quickly with all of the information he’d just gathered, and he breathed out. “I see,” was all he could say at first, and he scratched at the side of his neck to hide the heat forming there from view.

Qrow looked at him, at the extra light in his eyes slowly faded away. The hair on the back of Clover’s neck went back down, and he had to look back at Harriet and Elm to stop himself from saying something stupid. “That’s impressive,” he settled on, and Qrow was quiet for a long moment, before he slowly exhaled. He sagged into Clover’s side.

“Thanks,” Qrow said, and Clover hummed back to let him know he’d heard. They watched Harriet and Elm face off against one another for quite a while, Vine only playing once or twice with Elm badgering him into it. Just as it was getting late enough that Clover was considering getting them all to break for dinner, a weight dropped down onto his shoulder, and his head snapped over to Qrow.

The older man was resting on him, his eyes closed and breaths the deep and even rhythm of the sleeping. Clover stared at him for a moment before slowly, carefully, moving arm so that it was resting on Qrow’s shoulders. Qrow leaned more into him, and Clover felt his breath catch for a moment.

When he looked up again the others had paused their game and were looking at them. “I’m glad he trusts us so much,” Vine said, and Clover had to swallow to get rid of the lump in his throat at those words.

“I am too,” he said, and Harriet rolled her eyes before throwing a blanket at them. Clover managed to catch it before it woke Qrow and gave her a look, but she ignored him.

“I’m just glad it was us that found them, and not some other team,” she said, and Elm snorted.

“Lucky,” she joked.

Clover hummed as he spread the blanket out across the two of them, careful not to jostle Qrow. “Nah, I don’t think it was luck,” he denied, and his team rolled their eyes and went back to their game.

But he wasn’t afraid to admit that, in this moment, he’d never felt luckier.


End file.
